Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response. The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content. The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content.
It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators.
Now if people believe that anyone should be allowed to set up a site, fill it with full length DVD rips,and then charge $10 a month for access then no wrong has been committed. But I think most right-minded people would say that is wrong - otherwise we'd all be doing it.
Kim Schmitz has made a lot of money over a five to seven year period doing this. But the risk that came with that was that eventually he'd face serious jailtime.
I cannot believe that Megaupload is being touted as an anti-SOPA posterchild. It is, pure and simple, a piracy site full of pirated material. I'd be astounded [see update] if anyone here uses it for anything other than pirating. But let's not pretend it's Dropbox - it isn't.
I am also astounded that people on HN are calling this a legitimate business. What was its business? Was it being used to distribute Wikipedia archives? To host videos of people's kids singing? No - it was hosting pirated content. Not torrents, not links. AVI files of films. AND THEN CHARGING FOR ACCESS.
[Update: It seems some people below did use it for sending big files. Colour me astounded. I've never had to do this so it's new to me. I guess the fact remains that they had to subsidise this activity somehow - and that they made their money off popular content. They have to hope this is enough to cover their asses.]
Based on not only the experience of others, but the claims of the DoJ itself, this is clearly false.
> The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content.
This is true in the same way YouTube provides advertising around, and your friendly local ISP provides access to, pirated content.
> The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content.
So does YouTube. So do various other business models.
> It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators.
How many legitimate business don't have their owners wrapped in layers of corporations strewn around the globe? Nothing particularly unique or illegal here.
> Now if people believe that anyone should be allowed to set up a site, fill it with full length DVD rips...
It's an outright lie to claim that they themselves filled it with said rips. The users did. Just like many other sites, usenet servers etcetera.
> Kim Schmitz has made a lot of money
Yeah, that's a crime...
You've already corrected one claim, that Megaupload wasn't used for legitimate purposes.
Full disclosure: personally, I believe copyright in it's current form should die. Partly because of exactly this: it makes virtually impossible to provide any service around something that is way more important than the profits of the entertainment industry: the freedom of people to share information.
I also highly doubt this would actually be much of a problem if there was any economic impulse for the entertainment industry to provide a decent alternative.
In the current context, with a ridiculous artificially created scarcity, how the hell is anybody supposed to run a site like Megaupload and not have it full of "illegal" DVD-rips and shit, whether they like it or not?
The DOJ might have evidence that this was deliberate, but all the rest of us have is propaganda and deeply biased speculation.
>> It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators.
> How many legitimate business don't have their owners wrapped in layers of corporations strewn around the globe? Nothing particularly unique or illegal here.
I might be slightly off-topic here, but I think this is a good opportunity to point out the danger of falling for a "Halo or Horns" fallacy.
Simply put, if you believe one aspect of a person (or thing) to be bad, you're more likely to judge its other aspects in a negative light. Similarly, one good characteristic can make you more likely to judge the other aspects in a better light.
You can see examples of Halo vs Horns all the time if you look for it. It's very common when mob psychology comes into play, and often causes a change in the status quo.
Did you read the indictment before attempting to "analyze the propaganda"? Unless you believe the FBI's evidence is manufactured, then some of your rebuttals are already known to be false. The owners of the site were uploading DVD rips and music albums to the site, not just users.
Not 720p, but I don't think that was really the main point. By the way, I just got the link by going to YouTube and searching for "the dark knight part 1".
You can host videos on Youtube that don’t show up in search results and link to them from 3rd party websites. That’s exactly like Megaupload, but with streaming.
The other side of this SOPA battle is playing us like a fiddle. This WSJ article took our stance (it's not my stance but the majority here's stance) and attacked us with it by saying we're pro-piracy. That doesn't go over well outside this community. If we just got off the copyright/privacy topic for a minute and focused on the big picture we could fight more effectively.
Point out that SOPA/PIPA are unnecessary because the Feds are shutting down sites just fine without it. Point out that due process is done away with by SOPA. Etc.
They want us to be talking about copyright and piracy but this isn't about those things at all! This is total misdirection by the other side and we all just played into it. What this is really about is the government and entertainment industry trying to grab the power to do the things they've already been doing without having to go do all that annoying stuff like gathering evidence, building a case, or holding a trial. For being such a big group of smart people I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone else point this out before.
> saying we're pro-piracy. That doesn't go over well outside this community.
Just a side-note: that's not necessarily true, and a perception that is partially based on scare mongering. Vast numbers of people engage in "piracy", and it isn't seen as harmful by the general public. Hollywood and music industry aren't exactly as popular as their products either, and it's the biggest fans of those products that "pirate" the most.
Piracy and illegality isn't necessarily something that scares the general public either. I'm thinking for example of the illegal pirate radio stations in Europe in the past. Hugely popular, and eventually the reason for their existence was accommodated by the law.
On the other side of the coin: the mainstream US public hasn't been particularly concerned about throwing due process out of the window since 9/11... Fuck, it's public knowledge that the US is detaining and torturing people outside the law, the people are cool with that.
Since when has "due process" suddenly become a convincing argument for the masses? Maybe you should actually be waving the pirate flag instead...
Though the public may be pirating a lot there's a disconnect between what they perceive as pirates and piracy and downloading torrents of the new Lady Gaga album. This is all about PR and when the opposition uses piracy to describe the bill the public has an easy time getting behind that. Whenever I hear SOPA on the news it is always described as "a bill that aims to reduce online piracy".
You make a good argument but that argument isn't aimed at the right audience. I for one have pirated copyrighted material but I wouldn't want my own work to be pirated and I'm actually for copyright. I'm pretty honest with myself so I recognize this disconnect and understand that SOPA is bad for the public but others like me hear "piracy" and immediately think of shady websites that steal credit cards and other individuals. It's always "someone else should be arrested for doing this but not me because (insert excuse here)". They just don't think of themselves or what they do as piracy. They think of it as isolated incidents that aren't a big deal even if their entire music collection came from the Pirate Bay.
The negative perception of piracy/pirates is fear mongering but it works. Also, despite the attitudes of Europeans that doesn't help. This is a US law and US citizens don't think that way. I don't want to offend anyone but I think that a lot of us here live in a bubble. We're surrounded by techies and programmers and people like us so we forget who we really need to convince.
It's people like our parents who we have to convince. Young people like me may get it completely of theyre tech savvy. If they're not then they get it to a decent degree. But young people in the US aren't as active in politics as they should be. There's been an impressive response to this but I still think our little bubble blinds us to the fact that far fewer people get it and are doing anything about this. Don't look at Occupy Wall Street, that issue comes from something that they personally relate to. Not having a job, being poor, and seeing the rich get richer while their financial situation isn't improving is very relatable, personal, and the cause lends itself easily to broad support. Piracy doesn't lend itself as well to such broad support. People aren't as concerned with the web as much they are about putting food on the table. To them this is a tech industry problem, not theirs.
I'm lucky and unlucky enough to be surrounded by mostly everyday folks and few techies. I'm 25 and I work primarily with people 10 to 40 years older than me (most are between 55-65). They're the people who vote. They can barely get MS Word to work. Those are, unfortunately, also the people who represent us in the US.
So while there may be decent support for piracy we still should broaden our scope and make this relatable to far more people. Make it about things people care about and use all the time like search engines and Facebook. If you tell them they could lose the ability to find what they search for because of censorship they'll come on board. If you say they can get sued or kicked off Facebook or YouTube for posting a picture or video of something copyrighted they'll be more responsive.
You're right that they may not care about due process so we can take that argument a step further and tell them in a way they understand. Instead of mentioning due process tell them their kid will (will not can) go to jail for posting the wrong thing on Facebook or downloading a single song. Or say they'll get a huge fine in the mail without warning. Let them know their online store will get shut down without warning and payments will be freezes. You'd be surprised at how many people who can barely use a mouse have had someone set up and online store for their little mom and pop shop or MLM business.
We're all so focused on logic and facts around here and that's not effective enough. It's one thing to have right on your side but it's another thing to be able to explain it to someone else. The web designers/developers here should understand this. We have to give our audience something they care about. We have to get people interested and listening before we can educate them and you do that by appealing to emotion by making it personal and relatable. I know it shouldn't be that way but that's how things work in the US. I'd rather swallow my pride and go about this in a way that works rather than insisting on being right and talking at people who don't want to listen.
You don't see the opposition talking about the facts, do you? They use emotion to get support. They make the word piracy negative and scare you with it while saying "we're doing this to protect you" which makes people okay with it. "Oh, so you just want to stop those dirty pirates? That's fine, put them all in jail because piracy is stealing and stealing is bad. Sure, I download a few torrents every now and then but I'm not a pirate" is the public's thinking. There's a lot of issues involved with SOPA and by trying to shove them all down the public's throat we're just overloading them and they're not listening. We have to focus on what gets this bill killed first and then try to change the attitudes of Americans. If we can just tell them how SOPA hurts the average working man without preaching about piracy and copyright we can kill this bill. Then we can all go off into our little splinter groups and do the same thing for piracy and copyright. 1. Kill SOPA. 2. Change attitudes towards piracy and copyright. 3. Stopping future SOPA style bills and getting pro-piracy/anti-copyright passed becomes far easier.
I won't be waving the pirate flag any time soon either. I'm still not convinced about it but I'm open to suggestion. The one reason I support copyright and am not a piracy fan is because as a creator I wouldn't want my work pirated. It would hurt me. But I'm still a consumer too and I see the danger of SOPA and don't want it passed. Even though I disagree with most people here I'm still with everyone in being against SOPA. I personally believe in a balance of power between creators and consumers. I'm willing to admit that the power is currently heavily favored toward the creators and wouldn't mind seeing copyright scaled back by a lot but I'm still not ready for it to go away completely nor do I think piracy is ethical.
I agree here. We should make the main issue the fact that MPAA and RIAA just want to do away with due process. So we have to ask ourselves, why are they doing that? It's because when these cases actually go to Court, they don't always win. In fact in a lot of the cases they lose.
This is why they've been trying to switch their strategy from fighting the "pirate sites" in Court, and instead just try to get Congress to pass a law that helps them bypass the courts completely and give them a kill-switch for all the sites they don't like. Their strategy with these bills has been "shoot first, and hopefully you don't ask any questions later and take us to Court".
So before anything, this is what we really need to focus on and fight against - them wanting to remove full due process. But once we do kill SOPA and PIPA for good, we really need to get Congress to kill the Pro IP Act (passed in 2008), which already allows ICE to take down .com, .org, .net sites without due process. In a way Pro IP is worse than SOPA and PIPA, because they already affect "US sites" rather than "foreign sites".
'What this is really about is the government and entertainment industry trying to grab the power to do the things they've already been doing without having to go do all that annoying stuff like gathering evidence, building a case, or holding a trial.'
Parts of SOPA/PIPA will make their lives easier, this is true, however it also grants new powers. Much recent fervor revolves around these new powers.
You also criticize the rhetoric of the community, but due so in reference to the Wall Street Journal. I have no doubt that they will be the last publication to adopt, support, or accept our rhetoric. Now that doesn't make the general criticism false.
The primary fallacy I see in your argument is instead that the terms like pro-piracy need be liabilities. There are pirate parties in several countries now, and historically powerful, emotionally salient terms can be used either as marks of shame or pride. Language is fickle like that.
Now I can say that there is a dangerous cancer in this country and it is a malignancy that has been growing for years, and now that we've found a way to hurt it, slow its growth, to bleed it out, it's releasing toxins. Piracy is the cure to the cancer on the creativity of America. I can say that the 1% of middlemen and lawyers that call themselves 'rightsholders' are afraid of people point out how bloated they are, and how Un-American it is to be bad at your job, inefficient, and dictatorial. They represent barriers to innovation, to freedom, and to the growth and prosperity of their nation. Some of us have decided the situation is so intolerable that we will advocate breaking unjust laws and causing direct, lasting, and public harm to this institution.
This is protest and the hope of change. It is only history that will determine who played whom.
I think the terms we're talking about really are liabilities. They're being used against us. The US is a completely different animal than other nations. Maybe we can get the public to think differently about piracy one day but considering the short amount of time we have to stop SOPA I think we need to prioritize and leave that fight for another day.
Discussions and movements surrounding copyright and piracy are definitely something we need to have but I think it's more important in the short term to stop SOPA and then leave these other movements for later. We can't change American's attitudes within a month or two. So let's prioritize and make it about the things I said earlier rather than focusing too much on the piracy and copyright. And yeah, the law does grant new powers too but you can't throw too much information at people all at once or they shut down on you. We have to break this up into small, manageable, relatable terms to get others on our side.
As it stands it just seems like we're preaching to the choir amongst ourselves. We all have slightly different opinions when it comes to some of the details but for the most part we all get it and we're against this. It's the everyday non-techies we need to reach.
I actually am in the minority here. I support copyright, I think it's valuable, and I'm also against piracy because of how I'd feel if someone pirated software I developed. But I'm still on your side when it comes to SOPA. I even feel that copyright goes way too far and wouldn't mind seeing the term shortened by a lot. But I do get this issue. There are a ton of people who share my opinion on copyright and piracy who think SOPA is actually a good thing. Their logic is that if piracy is bad then this law to stop it is good. We don't get the finer points, we don't know that there are laws in place that stop piracy already and that they're more than sufficient, and we generally think of pirates as the traditional back-alley, trench coat wearing bootlegger types. Those are the people you need to relate to. There's not enough time to change their mind on piracy so you have to frame it in a way they relate to. Make it personal. When I say we, I mean people who share my (minority here) opinion on copyright and piracy. I get the SOPA issue but others like me don't.
Hopefully I wasn't too confusing with all the pronouns I just abused.
It's better to allow these sites to continue to exist and demand that they comply with the requests than take them down with the FBI or whatever law enforcement agency.
The precedent is far too dangerous. It's so dangerous that it could make PIPA / SOPA look like little cute puppies.
The moral issues of being a pirate or not being a pirate and of allowing or not allowing piracy to exist are more of a "feel good, don't be weird" matter.
These legal precedents can and will be used to silence any kind of protests and all things like: articles / reports about police brutality, murders, people "vanishing" conveniently when what they're saying is incovenient for someome, fake votes, scandals of all sorts.
Today it's Megaupload, tomorrow it will be YouTube. After that, they will interrupt a live report which is incovenient.
If you think those who rule are better than this, you're wrong. We've seen it before and we're seeing it again: Apple used the FBI and the police on the country's territory as its own security force as if the country was its headquarters, the FBI seems to be used more and more to go after pirates and other such things.
Meanwhile, all kinds of bad things happen around the world, but the law enforcement agencies are too busy to defend the copyrights of big companies which want more billions in the pockets of those who own those companies.
While the people are paying their taxes and are expecting to live a life without being worried they'll be nuked by some insane dictator, they really don't want to look over their shoulder to make sure the politicians who are ruling the country aren't being replaced by the puppets of the corporations.
After all, making sure a 12 year old doesn't download an mp3 from Megaupload is far more important than making sure my children won't be having a probe in their bodies to tell the companies and the government where they are, what they eat, what they like, if they're sick, what they're seeing and saying and what their opinion is on the ads they see.
The state consists of two parts, the corporation and the government. The government are not some dumb fools who are just "get used" by some old shadowy men in some corporate office. Its a symbiotic relationship.
Apple didn't "use the police and FBI" - the police and FBI investigated crimes that are under their legal purview. Theft and corporate espionage are serious crimes and they are seriously investigated by both local police and the FBI. This is totally normal.
My mother once casually knew a guy who ended up stealing a bunch of computers from a company he consulted for. Because they had sensitive data on them, the FBI visited us.
Why? Because that's a crime the FBI covers.
There was nothing wrong, no extension of corporate powers, no overreach, no special treatment at work with the stolen iPhone prototype whatsoever.
I'm more upset with the precedent than I am with the particular site.
I've never made a DMCA request against them, but my understanding from the DoJ presser was that they did comply with the letter- They removed the links that were sent. They just didn't necessarily remove all other links to the same file.
When you filed yours, did you follow legal procedure, and go through their registered DMCA agent with paper mail, etc?
(I'm not implying you didn't, I'm trying to understand this whole mess)
Let's say for the sake of discussion that these were "Bad Guys", and the site was used for infringing purposes.
If they're following the US law, they still ought to be safe.
You can arrest people for breaking laws, but not for being assholes.
I followed the procedure to the letter - that was the whole point of the experiment. Do you honestly think they have a whole team of people diligently working through DMCA requests? Of course not - it's the foundation of their whole business.
Now proving this is no-doubt going to be difficult. And prosecuting in front of a jury who have been pummelled with anti-SOPA sentiment for months is a nightmare. So I think they've a very good chance of getting away with it.
I'm interested in reading the data and procedures for your experiment. Where can I access it? I hate to say this, but until you provide your work; it's really difficult to believe anything you just wrote. Not to mention it's pretty impossible for the people at Megaupload to defend themselves. How do we know that you actually followed procedure? What do you define as proper procedure? What were the items in question?
For the request to go ahead, the alleged offence need to be an extradition offence (http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1999/0055/latest/D...) - which means that the alleged conduct of the defendants would be a crime in New Zealand if it was done here, and would be a crime punishable by 12 or more months imprisonment in the US.
New Zealand has a bar to Internet provider copyright liability (http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/D...), defined as follows:
"
Internet service provider means a person who does either or both of the following things:
(a) offers the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user’s choosing:
(b) hosts material on websites or other electronic retrieval systems that can be accessed by a user
"
However, ISPs have to forward notices from rights holders to the user, and after the third notice, to the copyright tribunal, allowing proceedings to be filed.
If MegaUpload did nothing more than offer a file upload service, and complied with the applicable procedures for responding to rights owner requests, it seems unlikely that that particular allegation would amount to a crime in New Zealand. However, the article lists a number of charges, and the extradition law doesn't allow them to challenge the alleged facts, only whether they amount to a crime in New Zealand and the country they are being extradited to.
Presumably this is why Universal have been talking of "conspiracy", they'll have tried to find some sort of loophole to avoid NZ from applying a local "safe harbour" law. Not that NZ probably have a choice about it all ...
This sounds like a somewhat clever loophole around DMCA requirements. Host the same/duplicate file at an approximately infinite number of different URLs and take them down one by one as DMCA requests come in for specific links. This seems like a someone complicated loophole to write around because even if the DMCA was changed to allow takedowns of media and it's duplicates (if it doesn't already) you could combinatorially add random junk into the stream and circumvent that as well.
A more nuanced version of the system newhouseb is proposing would be one in which, for every 'upload' of the file that receives a DMCA takedown notice, the associated download link could be deleted (i.e. complying with the notice as far as the rights holder is aware) but another one almost immediately created, linking to the same content.
The host could simply claim another user uploaded it after the DMCA notice was received and the original link removed.
Presumably DMCA notices don't apply to future uploads as well? That would be almost completely unenforceable for a service like Megaupload.
Edit: Just a couple more proposals for such a system. First, the link re-creation could be conducted randomly at different times after deletion for different uploads, giving the impression that it is not the result of an automated process.
Second, a host could publish all the DMCA notices they receive, providing a plausible explanation for why all the content is 're-uploaded' soon after being taken down. Surely a host can't be held responsible if its 'users' take it upon themselves to almost immediately re-upload any content taken down by DMCA notices?
DMAA safe harbor only applies if you are not aware of the infringing content. If you have a bunch of links to the same file and only take down one then you have no protection under DMCA and the standard 'greater-than $3k damages then go to jail' applies.
There is also a red flags test. If a reasonable person would be aware that the site is hosting files that infringe then it's not protected. And also you can't get direct financial benefit from it, you have to close accounts of repeat offenders, and some other restrictions.
Basically everybody knew Megaupload hosted warez, there were red flags, megaupload didn't take down links they knew were warez, and they made money off of it. Case closed. There may have also been legitimate use of megaupload, but they weren't covered by safe harbor and them being shut down is the law working as intended.
> you could combinatorially add random junk into the stream and circumvent that as well.
One could, like how people flip/speed up/record tv to get around youtube blocking, but it would take a lot of work and dedication to keep uploading your 500+ MiB movie rips over and over again.
> If you have a bunch of links to the same file and only take down one then you have no protection
But the existence of a copy does not tell you whether the uploader had the appropriate license from the copyright holder, or is the copyright holder, of that copy. Files do not fit into "legal" and "illegal" bins by the order of the bits alone.
Let's say I create and sell a software package. I upload it to my Megaupload account so I can easily access it later at another location.
Someone else uploads a copy they bought with a stolen credit card so they can share it on a warez forum. I send a DMCA notice of infringement requesting this copy be removed from Megaupload.
Should Megaupload now also locate all links to that file and remove them, including mine, which is entirely legal for them to host? Is Megaupload required to breach its contract with me as a paying user of their service, in good faith and violating no laws, in order to meet the DMCA safe harbor requirements? I think not.
If you have half an hour left watch the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLEe496IS1o
Errol Morris interviews the notorious NYC lawyer Murray Richman. In the end you will realize, that it is all about the "asshole" factor and very little about actual laws.
"The arrests were carried out by Organised & Financial Crime Agency New Zealand (OFCANZ) and police, following a mutual legal assistance request from the United States"
Your link says the state of Virginia is claiming jurisdiction because some of the servers were there. The lesson I guess is if you're going to run a site like this, don't host it in America.
There's no indication that any laws of New Zealand were broken. The NZ cops simply cooperated in enforcing U.S. law.
So you're saying if 100 countries each have their own DMCA-like requirements for notification and takedown, each a little different, then if I have any kind of site where users post content, under Berne I have to implement 100 different systems?
And then somehow I have to figure out where each item was originally created (not posted from), and apply the appropriate system for that file?
Can you quote me Berne on that one - it seems strange because copyright is an unregistered right. USA as one of the last countries to accede to Berne retains some registration systems as a way for rights holders to get access to greater fines in court. But this is not a widespread system.
Do you mean the country of origination of the copied work?
Yes it is origination. Your are correct that registering is an outdated concept and Berne actually insist on automatic copyright in the origin country.
I keep wanting to see some one fight extradition to the US on the grounds that water boarding is torture and that the country can't legally extradite to countries that use torture.
I don't quite get this either. They weren't that stupid to have their servers in the US where everything is illegal, were they? And what about similar sites like Rapidshare? How do they get to be still up and running, yet doing quite the same thing for decades?
>I am also astounded that people on HN are calling this a legitimate business. What was its business? Was it being used to distribute Wikipedia archives? To host videos of people's kids singing? No - it was hosting pirated content. Not torrents, not links. AVI files of films. AND THEN CHARGING FOR ACCESS.
So by your definition, Dropbox is an illegitimate business because I stuck my (purchased) copy of The Dark Knight on there and they didn't remove it?
I used MegaUpload. A LOT. For legitimate content. It's very useful because I don't have to worry about hosting it on my own server and potentially going over my bandwidth cap (I send RAR files with large images for graphic design, totally legitimate need for MU).
Just to provide one counterexample, I also filed DMCA complaints with Megaupload in the 2009/2010 period. The files were removed as requested, silently.
"I am also astounded that people on HN are calling this a legitimate business. What was its business?"
To be honest, I was not aware that Megaupload in particular was that pro-piracy. The times I've come in contact with them has been for legitimate content, a few times a month. I've never really liked them though, because of all the secrecy behind those who run it, and the design of the site itself which doesn't appeal to me at all.
You have to recognize that there are legal uses for such sites too, however. From my experience, people love sharing _their own_ music and images there, and that is reason I come in contact with them at all.
Now if people believe that anyone should be allowed to set up a site, fill it with full length DVD rips,and then charge $10 a month for access then no wrong has been committed. But I think most right-minded people would say that is wrong - otherwise we'd all be doing it.
Just not true. I don't think there is anything wrong with videotaping police going about their business (without breaking any other laws, hindering them at their job, and such), but you WILL NOT find me doing it in my home state (Illinois) due to such actions being zealously prosecuted felonies. Many other people agree with me here. A cost/benefit analysis making me choose not to do an action is much different than me thinking that action is wrong.
I believe AlexMuir's implication was that things which are illegal are automatically wrong, since it's obvious that HN, in particular, has lots of users who don't believe filesharing is wrong.
I can't speak for Alex, but I'm quite sure that wasn't his implication. He was stating that knowingly distributing pirated content for profit was wrong.
First they come for the sites that are 90/10 pirate to legit. Seems reasonable. Then 80/20. Then 70/30. Now they're getting the process streamlined. How far will they go? 20/80? 10/90? When will it be too much? When does it become unreasonable?
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
I don't know when it will become unreasonable, but I don't want to get to that moment, just to realize there's no one to speak for us.
They may start with piracy (OK, they are violating copyright), then why not libel, seems fair enough. And while we are there, why not stop this, and that.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had an excellent phrase that I always remember:
The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on
information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but
the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse
has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would
deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself
your master.
I liked the Alpha Centauri quote a lot so I searched it and I think the beginning of the quote is just as interesting: "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century..."
I agree completely, I just thought it was awesome that right now many of the headlines are focused on the U.S. which aligns with the "Painful" learning of the Americans in the context of the game ;)
It's disgusting that you chose to reappropriate that quote in this context.
If you read the indictment, it's clear that this was the purposeful monetization of pirated material. It wasn't a few users who uploaded some things. It was a criminal site, operating in bad faith, committing a multitude of crimes.
You should seriously be ashamed of yourself for comparing those famous words to seven criminals (who have strong evidence against them) who are about to get a jury trial.
You wouldn't say that if, in years ahead, you find yourself looking back and realizing acts like this were the beginning of a tight grip on information and freedom from a world where you're afraid to do much of anything anywhere in the world for fear of your business being shut down, being arrested, and treated as guilty until proven innocent, you probably wouldn't feel this was a disgusting comparison.
I understand that it's easy to get swept away in fearful hyperbole, but it's not a bad thing to keep a cynical eye on the actions of a government, and not a bad thing to look to history at its worst for warning of a future we'd like to avoid. It's not a 1:1 comparison he's done, but it's a valid concern.
Nothing about this case makes me fear your future.
I read the indictment. The cause for fear simply isn't there.
It's useless to pretend you're keeping an eye on the government when all you're really doing is getting a tiny shred of information and then getting hysterical because of it.
Please don't pat yourselves on the back simply because you're able to get hysterical with your willfully ignorant, less-than-half-baked ideas about what happened. You aren't doing something noble, you're doing the opposite. You're making it hard to fight REAL fights because you're using energy on bullshit.
I don't feel anyone is getting hysterical, and I feel his quote wasn't invoked for the benefit of the MegaUpload execs but rather at the current climate in general. Part of paying attention is to digest every 'shred' you do get.
Also, this is an online forum, I doubt anyone feels their conversations here are noble acts or something to pat oneself on the back over, so painting broad ugly pictures of people you know very little about is just rude and not helpful to the discussion.
I think you don't realize that my comment was a response to noonespecial: First they come for the sites that are 90/10 pirate to legit. ... When will it be too much? When does it become unreasonable?
So, I think the quotation was very fitting for the occasion, because it means exactly that. They may start taking people in custody because of a seemingly legit reason (in this case, copyright infringement, in the case of Nazi Germany, the Dolchstoßlegende). But power corrupts, and if they start passing laws to control more and more and more the Internet, who will be the next? It can be Reddit, an editor of Wikipedia, or even You.
But of course, if you wish to honor your nickname, that's not my problem :) have a nice day.
> I think you don't realize that my comment was a response to noonespecial: First they come for the sites that are 90/10 pirate to legit. ... When will it be too much? When does it become unreasonable?
If you'd read the indictment you'd know that the problem wasn't the percentages. We aren't standing on a slippery slope. Well, we are... but this case is not part of it at all. This case is a distraction from that problem.
This is, at it's heart, a completely traditional bust of a large-scale for-profit copyright infringement regime. Nothing particularly new about it at all, except that instead of finding a warehouse filled with tapes or discs, it's all on spinning metal disks.
KIM DOTCOM is a convicted criminal. (securities fraud, embezzling, and some other crap)
He's about to be tried again, for another crime. But he's already a criminal.
The person I responded to was comparing mass genocide to the orderly trial of a criminal who is suspected of committing more crimes. That disgusts me. It casually trivializes massive horrors.
For your information, half of my father's family died in Auschwitz. Luckily, my grandparents came here before war started and they saved their lives. So that's why I have very present what that quote means. But I also live in Argentina, where 36 years ago a Dictatorial Government killed people passing laws, just to arrest and disappear the ones who opposed to them. And what was the reaction of the rest of out society? Just say to their children: "Don't get involved in that." "Just leave well enough alone."
So no, I don't compare piracy with holocausts. That would be mad. But I have present that passing laws that allow the government to monitor everything you do online, may gradually and eventually lead to a dark future. And I dont want to get there seeing this moment as where it all started, and having done nothing about it.
Neither German nor US government have the right do define or power to define language beyond its use in government affairs. In the English language shared by millions of people, Kim is in fact a convicted criminal.
It seems unproductive to society to treat "criminality" as a write-once binary switch, which once flipped can never be erased. There are far too many confounding factors. Someone is benefiting from the desire to brand human beings for life for something in their past, as well as the immediate assumption that accused is as good as guilty, but it isn't society.
In fact, I know someone who used to like Megaupload to an extent, but even before a trial, thanks to this cultural tendency and inflammatory news coverage, said, "It turns out they were guilty of racketeering and money laundering, so they were some pretty bad guys." Despite being a reasonably well-informed person, he too fell victim to the urge to equate accusation with guilt.
At this point it doesn't matter what Kim Dotcom did a decade ago in Germany, or whether Megaupload is guilty of all the things they're accused of and more. The damage to the public's perception of legitimate file sharing has been done, and what I think was the most important thing to come out of Mega, the MegaBox music service, is most likely dead.
Using the term "criminal" to describe somebody has already paid their debt to society for the crimes they were convicted of last decade is, to put it lightly, not polite.
There were indeed some awful things that happened back then, but if we act as though nothing else can possibly compare to them then we won't have learnt anything from them. It could be that things continue to get worse, and eventually are as bad, but by the time we get there it's too late - which seems like exactly what Niemoller's quote is trying to point out.
Slopes aren't always as slippery as you may believe. The point of this is that the site actively promoted and profited from piracy. This isn't Facebook with someone posting a few lines from a song, this is The Pirate Bay.
Think of it like this: have you ever successfully argued to a cop that you only drive over the limit 10% of the time? What matters is the deliberateness of the speed you were doing when you got caught.
The deliberateness has never once mattered when I was stopped for speeding. It didn't matter if I was aware of my infraction, or if it was intentional. Just the speed. It didn't matter if I only drove over the limit 0.001% of the time, I was still busted.
That's what I'm afraid of. A world where 1 user-posted file that someone claims is protected results in arrests and the total loss of my site.
Setting aside minor traffic infringements, intent is a very basic part of criminal law.
As a counter-example, what if you hit someone with your car? Do you think it should matter if evidence exists that it was an accident or if there is evidence that you hit the person purposefully?
Every time I've been pulled over, the officer asks "do you know why I stopped you?" If I claim I honestly don't know, there's a better chance that the fine may be reduced. Or going in the other direction, 10mph over while driving might garner a warning, while 10mph over with another car next to you doing the same speed would get your car impounded for street racing.
Actually the Press release claims that they nefariously DID NOT promote piracy and therefore promoted piracy, in some weird Kafka-esque turn of phrase. They purposely don't show download leaderboards, of (I have no doubt) infringing files. Interesting complaint.
I agree with your thought process-- however, there is no reason to talk about what % of the service was used for piracy and what % wasn't. Non-owner/operator users should be viewed as completely separate from the owners and operators' and their actions. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of the users are pirating content, as long as the owners & operators were not engaging in illegal activities (including knowingly aiding pirates). The issue is that MegaUpload does't have the ability to determine what a user legally owns.
With that said, even if MegaUpload complied with legally-sufficient take-down requests, I imagine those who were arrested could easily be nabbed for simply having pirated content on their personal/work boxes... that's probably the fallback plan.
Side note- Google hosts a lot of pirated content on Gmail. It would be interesting to know how much pirated music is sent through Gmail in a day.
I'm pretty sure that the Feds didn't get copies of emails from Eric Schmidt saying that they need to fix the audio/video synchronization on the Sopranos... or that they need to rate-limit DMCA takedowns so they don't interfere with growth... or that they should ensure that when they do takedowns that they don't take EVERY copy down.
It's a specious comparison, made possible only because almost nobody on HN bothered to read the indictment before they got mad.
Thanks for letting us know; you are correct- I didn't see the indictment. I read the article quickly and came here to see what people were saying. I saw a lot of debate about "% of piracy," so I commented.
Wow the executives were deep in blatant piracy. It's fair that the site was shut down. Amazing, not surprising though.
Thank you. It's nice that at least ONE person recognized that maybe their uninformed reaction to a short article might not be 100% correct, and was willing to go read the indictment and learn a bit more.
Arrests for large-scale commercial copyright infringement and money laundering schemes aren't new. This simply isn't an example freedom getting more and more restricted.
Have you looked at how all the popular open source media players handle bug reports? Pretty much all of them don't care whether the file in the report is pirated or not and a surprising amount of bugs seem to be found and fixed because they break pirated content...
Also, trying to take every pirated copy down has a huge false positive problem.
> It is, pure and simple, a piracy site full of pirated material.
Yes, but it was also full of absolutely legal content uploaded by law-abiding users. Many people don't have the expertise needed to set up a file server and not everything is small enough to be attached to an e-mail.
> I am also astounded that people on HN are calling this a legitimate business.
As I understand, they had problems of DMCA compliance. If you subtract the illegal files, theirs is a perfectly legal and quite useful business.
It's absurd that they'd have to pay their employees to submit pirated content when there's droves of people online who would willingly submit it for free.
This accusation is as absurd as saying TPB had to pay its employees to upload trackers of pirated content.
From what I read Grooveshark is being sued by EMI for non-payment of royalties. UMG is suing Grooveshark for uploading music from its pre-1972 catalogue. However this all depends on the wording of the licensing agreement.
This is hardly comparable to uploading DVD screeners and R5s. Grooveshark to be operating legally (as they didn't get raided I'm guessing they're operating way too close to the law - well within counter-suit territory - for the major labels to actively attack them) would have had to be uploading the labels authorized versions, which likely means UMG gave them access to their pre-1972 catalogue without giving them approval to use it.
Good point my statement could be taken out of context. Would not have brought it up if it had not been heavily implied by AlexMuir and others, you can read my critical response to such:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3486750
People in the US don't have to comply with DMCA notices either. The safe harbor provision of the DMCA does not create new obligations, it creates a "if this then that" situation:
IF a service provider receives a notice of infringement AND promptly disables access to the content, THEN the service provider is granted immunity from liability for that infringement.
If you ignore the notice then this provision simply doesn't apply. You haven't "violated the DMCA" or anything like that, you simply don't gain the benefits offered by meeting the conditions of that section of the law.
Why would an entity outside of the US choose to comply with those notices? Because they may be sued in a US court, and when in a US court, the judge is going to apply US law -- including the protections of the safe harbor provision.
Why would an entity outside the US care about the result of a trial in US court? First, because international treaties mean they may be extradited to the US for violating these particular laws, and second, because the officers of the company may wish to be able to travel to the US -- at which point a sentence against them could be carried out.
What you're saying makes no sense. Can Iran extradite me for writing software to upload pornography to the Internet? (It's a capital offense there.) Of course not, because that's not how laws work. They can try to extradite me, of course, but no reasonable country would ever assist them. Similarly, it makes very little sense to extradite programmers at Megaupload. Sure, Megaupload is probably illegal in the US. But we're not in the US, so it doesn't matter. (They got the extradition by saying that Megaupload is laundering money, among other things. This is like extraditing a coffee shop owner in Amsterdam for selling pot. It's illegal in the US, after all, and he's laundering his ill-gotten money by pretending to sell coffee.)
This is garbage and I can't believe any court in the world would uphold this extradition. I'm appalled that they even got a US court to issue a warrant for such obviously-trumped-up charges. This is truly unprecedented.
generally extradition treaties, out of common sense, require something to be illegal in both jurisictions.
World powers are pretty much on the same page when it comes to money laundering. Following the money, as they say.
Your dutch coffeeshop owner hasnt committed a crime in the us by any stretch of the imagination, and is operating according to the wishes of his government (even if the weed is technicLly still illegAl, the current setup is ok, and the coffee shop owners are not hiding their profits... so its not mney laundering.
The internet changes the landscape drastically.... and using current laws to deal with real issues involving it is often dificult to useless. That doesnt mean we shold justify things that are wrong, nor should we make bad law.
ignoring the international issues.... just because a site could be used for copyright infringement is noreason tomtake it down. but lets be realistic, there a many sites out there where the owners knew damn well that their primary customer base were copyright infringers, and they catered to it fairly directly. sure some people used it for other things..... but if the primary revenue stream hosting and serving unlicensed work and you darn well know it.... you are asking for trouble.
The issue I have is with the money laundering charges. When you do something legal and put the money in your bank account, that's not money laundering. So while running Megaupload in the US might lead to money laundering charges, running it out of Hong Kong doesn't. They aren't hiding the source of their money: it comes from people paying to download pirated content. It's China, they don't really care about piracy there.
> Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response.
Er, was this content that you held the copyrights to? That statement seems to imply otherwise, which wouldn't really be ok (or itself compliant with the DMCA).
I think this _case_ can be seen as an anti-SOPA posterchild, because it shows that existing laws can already be used to successfully prosecute piracy.
There are some other comments about precedents that this may be setting (i.e., _stretching_ existing law). I'm curious to see how this plays out -- will SOPA-like provisions be "read into" existing laws by the courts?
I'm probably not the average MU user, but 99% of the stuff I used it for pretty legitimate. Game files/recordings, map files, photo albums people were too lazy to upload one by one, personal videos between friends we didn't want to upload somewhere public like YT, etc.
This is all anecdotal and I probably agree with you that the average user most likely just used it to download music and pirated content, but I do think you're overlooking a ton of legitimate usages as well.
>I'm a DMCA agent and this may well make my job harder. Megauploads was incredible with their response time to DMCA notices.
>They swiftly remove violating content, which will inevitably appear due to their business model. They do not condone piracy, and comply with DMCAs.
>The funny thing is that they TRIED to prevent this. They allowed record labels and movie studios to search through the files and delete anything they found as a copyright violation.
Some people may use Megaupload for hosting legit files, but I've personally never seen it used in any context other than pirated content. I wonder what the percentage of traffic is for pirated/legit content?
Your argument blurs distinction between users submitting pirated content and employees at the request of management. They are two very different cases if you have evidence that was not in article please share, otherwise the amount of revulsion in your post seems out of proportion with the current evidence.
Maybe the majority of the content was copyright-protected, but that's not always bad. Of course, I'm not talking about the last Photoshop with crack or the new Brad Pitt movie. I'm talking about that old fanzine scanned by someone, which is now the only online copy; about the first demo tape of your favourite band; that movie of 1940 which nobody has anywhere... Contents that can't be found anywhere. Yes, they're infringing copyright, but in fact that's good. Cause if they weren't in MegaUpload (or similar site) they would not were anywhere.
PS: I don't think HN has degraded so much to megadownvote good comments with good reasons, although they don't represent the supposed mainstream ideas.
FYI downvoting mostly affects posts with no content or poor reasoning (usually both). I don't agree with you, but I will not downvote you because of that.
I'll only answer one point:
> Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests
[not even arguing whether it's true or not]
As far as I understand, people who are not residents of the US don't have to comply with DMCA requests any more they have to comply with Iranian request to take down something that insults Islam. I even personally think that insulting Islam is genuinely more harmful than copying copyrighted content, so it would be very hard to argue that DMCA requests are "good" while Iranian gov ones "bad".
The only reason why I can think it's wise to comply with DMCA is because US has 43% of world's military budget and it's a very scary thought because it attack independence of everyone else.
Add me to the list of people who used the site for legitimate purposes only. I used it to send things that wouldn't fit on my VPS's storage, and were too big for any of the other digital lockers.
I agree about watching out against abuses by corporations or by the government, but megaupload was never the answer simoly because it didn't fill his purpose, which ideally should be to replace music and video brick and mortar stores. Netflix was better at that,and he was fighted for that too, unfortunately.
Thank you for offering your opinions on this matter, but allow me to disagree on the following points:
1) Robin hood was a criminal. Stealing is a crime, and he stole from the rich to give to the poor.
2) In this context, "piracy" does not mean stealing, it means sharing. Sharing objects, whether they are information objects such as movies or real objects such as lawnmowers, is natural and a natural right. See John Locke for details.
3) The MPAA, RIAA, and major software and video game makers have organized, through political donations and manipulating public opinion, a legal, institutionalized system of tyranny that deprives ordinary people of their natural rights.
4) The United States of America, through the FBI and other federal agencies, devotes considerable resources to finding and prosecuting those who work to oppose this system of tyranny. The United States of America is working for the tyrants whose business is predicated upon depriving ordinary people of their natural rights.
--- tl;dr ---
You do not have a choice between right and wrong. You have a choice between greedy scumbags who are tyrants and greedy scumbags who helping, in their own greedy, scummy way, ordinary people exercise their natural rights.
Well, if it helps to know, while I don't use it to send files, I receive files through Megaupload all the time. Files sent by their rightful owners. I try to get them to use Dropbox now but old habits die hard. (Hasn't Megaupload been around since before Dropbox?)
My friends, clients and PAs often used MegaUpload to send me big graphic and audio podcast files, and absolutely none of it was pirated. I don't use pirated software, ever. I happily pay for software I want, without flinching for a second.
Sorry to split hairs but responding with a "we took down this content based on your takedown notice" and actually taking down the content are two different things.
I've had companies take down content after a DMCA notice but never inform me they have done so; there is no requirement for them to do so.
I assume you're referring to the latter meaning though--that they left up infringing content after receiving notice. If they did that then they're in deep. ...As long as the US has jurisdiction to prosecute, which they probably do.
> Kim Schmitz has made a lot of money over a five to seven year period doing this.
Probably more famous amongst German hackers but this is also the Kim "kimble" Schmitz of insider-trading letsbuyit.com fame who pulled PR stunts like launching "Young Intelligent Hackers Against Terrorism" (Yihat) to track down Bin Laden and before letsbuyit.com was trolling German coder newsgroups. After all that he tried attracting only "very high wealth individuals" to a company he founded in HongKong that allegedly specialized in automated artificial intelligence trading and that was about the last I remember hearing of him...
On a personal level, this is very, very satisfying to see they got him again on charging people per month for illegal downloads! He gives actual European hackers an extremely bad name.
> I cannot believe that Megaupload is being touted as an anti-SOPA posterchild.
This right here, people. This is not linux torrents we are talking about - this is "I want your money and I take it any way I can and will then post pictures of my extra-ordinary live style online" kim schmitz, a convicted criminal who prides himself on being successful "outside of rules and legislations".
Yes, Kim "Kimble" Schmitz is a name I remember from 90's. He was quite often on TV in Germany, showing off his luxurious life-style, girls and cocktails at a pool, that sort of thing. And then he was jailed. He is indeed a convicted criminal.
I'm right there with you. The whole legitimate use thing is a thinly veiled attempt to seem like they're legit. The vast majority of its users are there for the piracy and anyone who tries to say that the main purpose of the site was for anything other than that is either just lying to themselves or just lying. The fact that it can be used legitimately doesn't mean it is nor does it mean it was ever intended to. This is just a really weak case of plausible deniability
I too am glad that someone finally went for the big guys. Rapidshare should be next in my opinion. They only make money on piracy and they know it. On the other hand, I hate when p2p networks are targeted (thepiratebay for example). Sure, they too make some money but nowhere close to paid sites like the megaupload and they don't even host the pirated content.
Indeed, when a site built around (partially) illegal content being shared, it's OK with me if they earn just enough not to lose money on operating the site. However, I do not believe you should profit off the content of others.
"I do not believe you should profit off the content of others."
This is the problem. Distribution is a perfectly legitimate business model, as is hosting. Think, I dunno, Youtube? They don't generate any content; should they not be allowed to make a profit?
Your stance is just strange. Megaupload can have revenue from piracy, just not too much? Once revenue from their illegal content passes operating expenses, they should stop making money off it? I don't understand what you want such a business to actually -do-.
There is a notion that "at some scale, significant quantitative differences are qualitative differences". This drives a lot of legislation around misdemeanors vs felonies and regulations that only apply to businesses/operations of a certain size.
Personal sharing vs mass piracy is a major example. Usually the boundary is drawn at money changing hands, but other boundary lines could be debated.
You might want to see my post below (or above, if the votes move it around). I don't have any issues with distribution as a business model, but essentially due to ideological reasons, I don't believe it should be primarily focused on illegal content, if profit is to be made.
Am I being downvoted because people think you should be able to earn money on pirated content, or because you think they should operate such sites at a loss (if at all)?
I'd think it might be the line "However, I do not believe you should profit off the content of others.". That's a blanket statement which probably has been misinterpreted as you being against any form of distributor or reseller business model.
Oh, I see. Thank you for pointing that out to me. My intention was to say that I do not believe that you should create a business-model around earning money on only pirated content. Helping artists getting their name and songs out there is a good thing, but without their approval I don't think you should profit off it.
No, they were Hong Kong based. Rapidshare (Switzerland/Germany) has already been sued there, and won, so their (current) business model, for the time being, is not accessible for american "shock and awe" justice.
Megaupload never complied with DMCA requests - I made several as part of some research and never received any response. The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content. The site paid people (users/staff - it's a fine line) to provide popular content.
It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators.
Now if people believe that anyone should be allowed to set up a site, fill it with full length DVD rips,and then charge $10 a month for access then no wrong has been committed. But I think most right-minded people would say that is wrong - otherwise we'd all be doing it.
Kim Schmitz has made a lot of money over a five to seven year period doing this. But the risk that came with that was that eventually he'd face serious jailtime.
I cannot believe that Megaupload is being touted as an anti-SOPA posterchild. It is, pure and simple, a piracy site full of pirated material. I'd be astounded [see update] if anyone here uses it for anything other than pirating. But let's not pretend it's Dropbox - it isn't.
I am also astounded that people on HN are calling this a legitimate business. What was its business? Was it being used to distribute Wikipedia archives? To host videos of people's kids singing? No - it was hosting pirated content. Not torrents, not links. AVI files of films. AND THEN CHARGING FOR ACCESS.
[Update: It seems some people below did use it for sending big files. Colour me astounded. I've never had to do this so it's new to me. I guess the fact remains that they had to subsidise this activity somehow - and that they made their money off popular content. They have to hope this is enough to cover their asses.]